Are press releases valuable again for SEO? What about AI SEO?

For years, the SEO industry has largely evaluated press releases based on their ability to generate backlinks. That has always been a fairly narrow way to look at them, and with the rise of AI Search, it may be time to reconsider what makes a press release valuable on the modern web.

We recently had a brand-new client publish a press release through PRWeb announcing the launch of their business. The objective wasn’t link building. We wanted to see whether a relatively inexpensive announcement could help establish a new brand across traditional search engines and AI-powered search tools. Fleeting though the visibility might be, the goal was to show the brand was legitimate and active and give our link building outreach and PR team something with more meat than a dubious “About” page.

After 72 hours, we tested the brand across five traditional search engines and seven AI search platforms.

The results were interesting, especially considering that the press release was distributed using PRWeb’s $245 Standard package.

Key Takeaways

• PRWeb ranked on the first page of all five traditional search engines tested for the client’s brand name, including the #2 position on both Google and Brave.
• ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode successfully identified the new business and cited the PRWeb announcement when directly asked about the brand.
• Google Gemini recognized the brand but did not cite PRWeb in our tests, while Claude neither recognized the brand nor cited the release.
• Duck.ai recognized the business and occasionally cited the release, but only in approximately one-third of tests involving second-opinion requests.
• AI-powered search results were not always consistent. Google AI Mode, for example, did not cite PRWeb in our brand-name search test but did cite it when asked a natural-language question about the company.
• Brand establishment and disambiguation may be among the most useful applications of press releases in AI SEO, especially for startups and businesses with names that overlap with existing companies or other entities.

The Experiment: Launching a Brand With a $245 Press Release

The client was a newly launched business with a brand name that was already being used in other industries. This introduced an additional challenge: search engines and AI systems needed to distinguish the new business from unrelated entities sharing its name.

We published a straightforward business launch announcement through PRWeb. The release covered the fundamentals:

• Who the company is.
• What products or services it offers.
• Where the company operates.
• Why the business was started.

There was nothing particularly elaborate about the announcement. It was a conventional press release intended to communicate essential information about the company and its launch.

We selected PRWeb’s Standard distribution package, which cost $245 at the time of publication.

Approximately 72 hours after publication, we checked how the new company appeared across major search engines and LLM-powered AI search platforms.

Traditional Search Engine Results After 72 Hours

Our first round of testing focused on branded searches across Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave, along with Google’s AI Mode search interface.

We searched for the company’s name and recorded where the PRWeb announcement appeared, as well as whether AI-generated results referenced it.

Search Engine	PRWeb Organic Ranking	AI Search / Overview Result
Google Search	#2	No AI Overview displayed.
Google AI Mode (Brand Search)	Not applicable	PRWeb was not cited as a source.
Bing Search	#6	PRWeb was used as a source in the AI-generated overview.
DuckDuckGo	#5	PRWeb was not used in Search Assist.
Brave Search	#2	No AI overview or summary was displayed.

Table 1: Traditional search engine results approximately 72 hours after publication. All searches used the client’s brand name.

What the Traditional Search Results Tell Us

The first observation is relatively straightforward: PRWeb managed to rank on the first page of every traditional search engine we tested.

For a brand-new business, that is significant. A potential customer who hears the company’s name and searches for it could encounter the launch announcement almost immediately.

And importantly, the announcement provides context about the company from a website other than the company’s own domain.

It is also worth noting that PRWeb ranked #2 in Google and Brave and #5 in DuckDuckGo, even though none of those searches produced an AI-generated answer citing the release.

That distinction matters. Ranking prominently in organic search does not necessarily mean a source will be selected for an AI-generated answer.

Bing was the exception. It ranked the PRWeb release #6 organically while also using the announcement as a source in its AI-generated overview.

We shouldn’t assume that the organic ranking caused the AI citation. However, the result demonstrates that the same published announcement can potentially serve two different purposes: providing a traditional organic search result and supplying information for an AI-generated answer.

AI Search Results: Did LLMs Know the New Brand?

The more interesting portion of the experiment involved asking AI platforms a direct question about the company.

We used the prompt:

“What is [brand name]?”

The goal was to determine whether each platform could identify the newly launched business and whether it would use the PRWeb announcement as a source.

AI Platform	Recognized New Brand?	Used PRWeb as Source?	Observations
Google Gemini	Yes	No	Recognized the business but did not cite PRWeb.
Claude	No	No	Did not identify the new business or cite the announcement.
ChatGPT	Yes	Yes	Identified the business and cited PRWeb.
Grok	Yes	Yes	Identified the business and cited PRWeb.
Perplexity	Yes	Yes	Identified the business and cited PRWeb.
Google AI Mode (Natural-Language Prompt)	Yes	Yes	Identified the business and cited PRWeb when asked what the company was.
Duck.ai	Yes	Sometimes	Cited PRWeb in approximately one-third of second-opinion requests.

Table 2: AI search results after approximately 72 hours, using a direct natural-language question about the new brand. Results reflect our testing and should not be interpreted as guaranteed or repeatable platform behavior.

Most AI Platforms Could Identify the New Business

Six of the seven AI platforms recognized the new brand in our testing. Four consistently positive observations were particularly noteworthy: ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode all identified the business and used PRWeb as a source.

Duck.ai also recognized the business, although the press release was cited less consistently and only during certain second-opinion requests.

Gemini knew about the business but did not cite PRWeb. Claude was the only platform tested that failed to identify the new company.

This suggests that information about the business was already accessible to a substantial portion of the AI search ecosystem just three days after the announcement was distributed.

We cannot conclusively attribute every instance of brand recognition to the press release. Different platforms may have found the business through other indexed pages or data sources. However, the direct PRWeb citations establish that the announcement itself was being retrieved and used by several AI search systems.

Why This Matters for AI SEO

1. Press Releases Can Help Establish a Brand as an Entity

A new company starts with a fairly obvious problem: search engines and AI systems have limited information about it.

They may have the company’s website, but that doesn’t necessarily provide a broader collection of independently published information explaining what the company does, where it operates, or how it relates to other businesses and industries.

A launch press release offers a structured narrative containing many of those details.

For a business whose brand name overlaps with names already used in other industries, this becomes particularly important.

Consider the difference between an AI system recognizing a name and correctly identifying the company the user is asking about. Those are not necessarily the same thing.

A press release that clearly connects the brand name with its industry, products, services, location, and founders can provide additional context for distinguishing that company from unrelated entities.

In our test, the press release helped make information about a newly launched business available through an established publishing website. Several AI platforms were then able to retrieve and cite that information.

That doesn’t prove the company was added to any specific knowledge graph or permanent model representation. But it does demonstrate a potentially valuable role for press releases in helping AI search platforms identify and describe new businesses.

2. PRWeb Appears to Be a Useful Source for AI Retrieval

One of the most compelling findings is that multiple AI platforms cited the same PRWeb announcement within 72 hours.

ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode all used the announcement in their answers. Duck.ai also cited it under certain conditions.

These platforms don’t necessarily retrieve information the same way. Some may rely on established search indexes, third-party search providers, proprietary crawlers, or combinations of multiple retrieval systems.

We do not know the exact retrieval path each platform used to discover the release.

However, the practical observation is that the PRWeb page became available as a citable source across multiple AI search experiences.

This is an important distinction from the historical SEO conversation surrounding press releases.

We’re not talking about passing PageRank through press release links. We’re talking about whether information published on an established platform can be discovered, retrieved, and incorporated into answers generated by AI search products.

Based on this test, PRWeb demonstrated value in that role.

3. Organic Rankings and AI Citations Are Different Outcomes

Another interesting finding was the difference between traditional search visibility and AI source selection.

PRWeb ranked #2 in Google’s traditional search results, yet Google AI Mode did not reference the announcement when we searched for the brand name and switched to the AI Mode tab.

When we instead asked Google AI Mode, “What is [brand name]?”, it identified the business and cited PRWeb.

Same platform. Same company. Different query format. Different sourcing behavior.

This reinforces something SEOs need to account for when evaluating AI visibility: the presence of a webpage in an organic search result does not guarantee it will be cited in an AI-generated response.

It also demonstrates why testing only one query or prompt may provide an incomplete picture of a brand’s visibility.

Branded navigational searches and natural-language informational questions can trigger different retrieval and answer-generation behavior.

4. Fresh Content Discovery Varies Across AI Platforms

Gemini and Claude were the two platforms that did not cite the PRWeb announcement during our testing.

Gemini recognized the company, suggesting it had access to information about the business from somewhere. Claude did not successfully identify it.

There are several possible explanations.

The PRWeb announcement may not yet have been available through the retrieval systems used by those products. Alternatively, it could have been available but not selected as a source. The systems may also have differed in whether they performed web retrieval for the specific prompt.

Because LLM output is probabilistic and the underlying retrieval and ranking mechanisms are not fully documented, we cannot determine the exact explanation from these results alone.

Seventy-two hours is enough time for some newly published information to appear in search indexes and AI search results. It is not a universal guarantee that every AI product will find, retrieve, or cite the same content.

It is possible that the results for Gemini or Claude would change after another week or two. It is also possible that they would not.

The Bigger Opportunity: Brand Discovery, Not Link Building

For much of the past two decades, SEO discussions about press releases have focused on backlinks.

Can you get followed links? Will the syndicated release pass authority? Do press release links improve rankings?

Those aren’t the questions we were trying to answer.

We wanted to know whether a basic launch announcement could help a new business become discoverable and recognizable in the search and AI search ecosystem.

After just 72 hours, we found that the PRWeb announcement was ranking prominently in traditional branded searches and being cited by several major AI search platforms.

This has potential value beyond technical SEO metrics.

Imagine a prospective customer hears about a new company through word of mouth, sees the name on social media, or encounters it in an advertisement. They search Google or ask ChatGPT what the company does.

For an established brand, there may be years of published information available to answer that question.

For a brand-new company, there may be very little.

A well-written launch announcement can provide one additional, easily discoverable explanation of the business, particularly when the release is specific about the company’s offerings, market, and purpose.

That can be useful even if the press release produces no meaningful referral traffic and provides no measurable ranking benefit through backlinks.

What Should Businesses Include in a Launch Press Release for AI SEO?

Based on what we were trying to accomplish, I would prioritize clarity and factual specificity over keyword stuffing or attempts to write content specifically for an LLM.

A startup announcement should make it easy for a reader, search engine, or AI search system to understand the following:

• The exact company name: Use the brand name consistently so that its identity is unambiguous.
• The industry and business category: Clearly describe what kind of company it is.
• Products and services: State what the business actually sells or provides.
• Geographic relevance: Identify its headquarters, launch market, and service areas where relevant.
• Founders and company background: Include factual information about the people involved when appropriate.
• The reason for the launch: Explain the market need, problem, or opportunity that motivated the business.
• The official company website: Provide a clear reference to the business’s primary online presence.

These details help connect the company to relevant concepts, industries, people, products, and locations.

For businesses with ambiguous names, those connections may be especially helpful in distinguishing the company from similarly named entities.

None of this requires writing a press release full of awkward SEO keywords. In fact, a clear, informative announcement written for people is likely to communicate the necessary facts far more effectively.

Methodology and Limitations

This was a small observational test involving a single newly launched business, not a controlled scientific study.

We published a standard company launch announcement through PRWeb using its $245 Standard distribution package.

Approximately 72 hours after publication, we conducted branded searches across traditional search engines and submitted a direct question about the company to several AI search platforms.

Where possible, searches and prompts were performed while logged out and using incognito or private browsing modes to reduce personalization effects.

For platforms where logged-out testing was not possible, including Claude and Grok, we used accounts unaffiliated with the client.

There are some important limitations to consider:

• Only one business and one press release were evaluated.
• The testing did not include a control group of comparable businesses without press releases.
• We cannot establish that the press release was the sole reason an AI system recognized the company.
• AI-generated answers and source citations can vary between prompts, sessions, and repeated requests.
• We cannot identify the underlying retrieval providers or crawling methods used by each AI platform.
• The results represent a snapshot approximately 72 hours after publication and do not establish long-term search or AI visibility.

We should also distinguish between an AI platform citing a press release and permanently learning information from that release. A citation in a retrieval-based answer does not demonstrate that the information has been incorporated into the underlying language model’s training data.

These limitations don’t invalidate the observed results. They simply define what we can reasonably conclude from the experiment.

Are Press Releases Worth It for SEO and AI SEO?

For a startup or newly launched business, I think this experiment provides a compelling reason to consider a properly written and distributed press release as part of a broader SEO and AI SEO strategy.

For $245, the client obtained a published business announcement that ranked on the first page of every traditional search engine we evaluated and was cited by several major AI search platforms within three days.

That is a meaningful visibility outcome for a brand-new business.

Does this mean every company should publish a press release every month? No.

Does it mean publishing through PRWeb guarantees inclusion in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Grok, or Perplexity? Absolutely not.

And does it prove that press releases directly improve organic rankings or permanently establish an entity in an LLM’s knowledge? No.

What it does suggest is that press releases can serve a useful purpose that extends well beyond conventional link building.

They can create an accessible, third-party-published source of information about a business, its activities, and its relationship to an industry or geographic market.

At a time when consumers are increasingly asking AI systems to explain companies, compare brands, and recommend providers, making accurate information about a business available through sources those systems can retrieve is worth considering.

For new businesses in particular, the value of a press release may have less to do with the links it contains and more to do with helping search engines and AI systems understand who the business is in the first place.

Our initial 72-hour results suggest that PRWeb can be useful for exactly that purpose.